The Artworks
"THE EMBRACES" by CESARE CATANIA
Today the Embrace Project finds its best artistic representation in The Artworks of art by Cesare Catania.
“A hug is worth more than 1000 words… there are no cold or hot hugs, there are no true or false hugs, there are no war or peace hugs…. The hug is universal. When two people they embrace, within whatever culture they do it, they want to express only one thing: love Regardless of their age, the color of their skin and their cultural differences.”
This is how Cesare Catania explains his idea and his state of mind when he draws or sculpts an embrace. And this therefore, among the countless artistic meanings, is the one that can be attributed to the works of the Italian artist.
To date, Catania has created the Artworks following on the theme of embracing.
ART CRITICISM ON CESARE CATANIA'S "EMBRACES".
“In his works Catania does not emulate organic appropriations of pigment, but mixes the virtue of line”
(Edoardo Callegari, Piacenza Poetry Museum)
The Embrace A Version
Technique: wax crayon on paper
Year: 2015
Original Size: 35x50cm
Print Size:50x70cm
Description of the Embrace A Version:
A man and a woman embracing each other express love and affection together. He is statuesque and confident; she is sincere and passionate. The firmness of the man and the dedication of the woman are perfectly represented by the mutual positions of the bodies and hands. She cranes her neck to bring her face closer to her man’s. He welcomes her and protects her.
The Embrace B Version
Technique: Palette knife oil on canvas
Year: 2016
Dimension: 255×175 cm
Description:
The hug is understood by the author in the strict sense between a man and a woman, in a broader sense between people of two different colours. The themes of anti-Semitism and racism are reconciled for Cesare Catania in an embrace.
The two figures in the act of embracing each other seem to overlap one another, almost as if they were giving each other protection and stability. One exists and can only exist as a function of the other.
The Embrace C Version
Technique: Silicone, acrylic, mineral pigments and resin on canvas
Year: 2022
Dimension: 80×100 cm
Description:
The Author observes his own painting from 2016 (The Embrace B Version) and imagines that the colors melt and then recompose in a whirlwind of colorful emotions. In this painting (belonging to a diptych), the pink character represented on the left of the Embrace B Version painting is colored in an abstract version.
The Embrace D Version
Technique: Silicone, acrylic, mineral pigments and resin on canvas
Year: 2022
Dimension: 80×100 cm
Description:
The Author observes his own painting from 2016 (The Embrace B Version) and imagines that the colors melt and then recompose in a whirlwind of colorful emotions. In this painting (belonging to a diptych), the yellow character represented on the right of the Embrace B Version painting is colored in an abstract version.
The Embrace E Version
Technique: Wax crayon on paper
Year: 2023
Size: 30x40cm
Description:
In this version the author takes the cubist version of the same painting (B Version – 2016) and revisits its shapes and colors in an informal key. In this new version the bodies are always wrapped around each other but we can sense a new perception of the busts, more streamlined and slender compared to the previous pictorial version; this is the graphic key to what will then be the subsequent sculptural representation of the same painting.
The Embrace F Version
Technique: Rusty steel
Year: 2023
Dimension: h 230 cm + pedestal
Description:
This is the first sculptural work referring to the theme of the embrace created by the artist Cesare Catania. Always consistent with his cubist and informal art, this is the first real attempt to bring the embrace theme from a two-dimensional plane to a 3D plane.
